Wednesday, November 04, 2015

Could it be David Vitter really doesn't know what he's doing?

The Fund for Louisiana’s Future (FLF) is funded by David Vitter and
his supporters. FLF shares staff and resources with the Vitter election
committee. FLF has spent the bulk of its funds trash talking other
Republicans.

FLF is a political organization registered with the Federal
Elections Commission as a federal independent expenditure-only
committee, commonly referred to as a “Super PAC,” and also registered
with the Louisiana Supervisory Committee on Campaign Finance Disclosure
as a state “political committee.” [1]

FLF is supporting David Vitter by bashing his opponents. The PAC
produces no ads telling voters why they should vote for Vitter, only ads
trying to damage the reputations of anyone running against him. (Note:
The single exception is $3,000 for media buys for the Insurance
Commissioner. This is the single instance of FLF saying something nice
about a Republican.)

Well that worked.. sort of. They kept the other two Republicans out of the runoff. Although, in reality, they probably just kept each other out by virtue of being 2 candidates in the first place. But whatever.

Joel DiGrado, executive director of FLF is also
Vitter’s communications director and the owner of Briefcase Strategies
LLC. Briefcase Strategies LLC has received $96,357.03 from FLF so far in
2015.

Courtney Guastella (Callihan), ex-Finance Director for “David Vitter
for US Senate,” is the current Finance Director for Vitter and the
go-to person for various fundraisers for Vitter. Her home address is
6048 Marshall Foch Street, New Orleans. That just happens to also be the
mailing address and registration address for FLF. Courtney has received
$205,000 from FLF in the last few years for “fundraising consulting” as
well as $145,000 from Vitter’s campaign. That comes to a grand total of
$350,000 from the two organizations over the same period. Courtney is
FLF’s highest paid individual consultant. (Remember that the FLF PAC and
Vitter (campaign) teams are supposed to be independent and not
collaborate. Yet the highest paid FLF staff person is also a six-figure
consultant to Vitter’s campaign).

In April 2015, Nicole Licardi joined FLF and is now FLF’s Finance
Director. Licardi has a long history with and is still a fundraiser for
Bill Cassidy. Since April 2015, FLF has paid her $78,111.62 or about
$12,000 per month.

You might recognize Guastella's name from Vitter's election day car accident. It's technically not really legal for campaign staff to coordinate with or be paid by the PAC like this. But nobody cares about that. The contributors might eventually start to care, though, when they see how stupidly it's all being spent. Vitter raised all this money because he could convincingly promise his funders they were buying a governor. Next time they might want to keep their receipts.